Gotye tops off dizzying success with Grammys hat-trick

Peter Vincent

Gotye and Kimbra moments after receiving the Grammy award for Record of the Year. Photo: Getty Images

IT'S the moment we fear: one of our own hits the big time in the US and we hold our breath - will it change them?

Wally ''Gotye'' De Backer might have been born in Belgium, but his family emigrated to the Melbourne suburbs when he was two. We knew he was 99 per cent Australian when we saw him momentarily thrown by meeting musical hero Prince, as The Purple One handed him the prized record of the year gong at the Grammys on Monday, and admit in front of millions that he had been inspired by him to make music in the first place.

''To hear Prince say 'I love this song' as I was walking up was cool,'' De Backer told Fairfax Media. ''We only found out two minutes before he'd be presenting. He has the aura around him. It was pretty exciting - both Kimbra and I are huge fans of his.''

Gotye snared a hat-trick of Grammys: best alternative album for Making Mirrors, best pop duo/performance for his global monster Somebody That I Used to Know and record of the year for the same song, a duet with Kiwi Kimbra, who was equally star-struck: ''We are unbelievably blessed to win.''

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It was the best return by an Australian since Olivia Newton-John in 1975 and the culmination of 18 months of dizzying chart success and songwriting accolades, mostly based on the success of Somebody. The track was the No 1 iTunes single in 50 countries last year, selling more than 13.5 million copies. It was viewed a staggering 383 million times on YouTube.

So could De Backer sum up that crazy 18 months in, say, one word? ''Ka-Booom!'' And does all this mean Gotye, having cracked the DNA of the US pop mega-hit, will now deliver a lot more just like it?

Not likely. ''We wrote an idiosyncratic song with no intention of fitting into a particular category, and it ended up connecting with people broadly,'' he said. ''So, if anything, it gives me more confidence to make music I'm into and to trust my instincts.''

John O'Donnell, a former EMI chief executive, says Gotye's achievement is stunning. ''It's a phenomenon … arguably the biggest-selling song in Australian music history.'' The Grammy wins are ''the icing on a very big cake'' for Gotye after so much chart success and the inevitable financial rewards that follow.

''The financial benefits have already happened,'' O'Donnell says. ''But this validates for Wally the way he works; he's always been an artist who does things on his terms. But it'll open even more doors for him in terms of opportunities and collaborations … I know film directors have been talking to him.''

Another Australian musician nabbed a further two Grammys. Flautist Tim Munro, a Queenslander, and part of the group Eighth Blackbird, won in two categories: best contemporary classical composition and best chamber music/small ensemble performance.